Legal scholars unsurprised by Roberts

Legal scholars expressed little surprise Thursday that the conservative chief justice of the United States -- John G. Roberts Jr. -- proved to be the key vote in upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.

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Presidential candidate and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) apparently used to have a very different opinion about Chief Justice John Roberts than he expressed on Thursday. According to a 2005 Sun-Sentinel report, Cruz once praised Roberts as "one of the best constitutional minds in the country."

The Supreme Court has ruled that people who bought healthcare coverage through federal exchanges as part of Obamacare can keep subsidies that effectively limit the amount low- and middle-income Americans pay for health insurance to 9.5% of their income or less.

The computer that assigns judges to 4th Circuit cases today drew a panel of three Democrats to hear the appeal over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, leading conservative reporter Philip Klein to immediately tweet that the bill’s constitutionality will be upheld.

It's not easy to know exactly where each Supreme Court justice stands on the issue of same-sex marriage. But it's important to find out what we can, now that we know the Supreme Court is going to rule on the issue this term.

One of the things that has confused me about the attack on the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality is that it's so limited. The Affordable Care Act isn't under attack, actually. Only the individual mandate is. And though the individual mandate is important to have, it could be replaced with some sort of automatic enrollment scheme, or some sort of modified penalty in which failure to purchase insurance locked you out of the bill's protections for a certain number of years.